Naming Terror

ON 22 APRIL, an armed group carried out a horrific, communally motivated act of terrorism, killing 26 Indian civilians, mostly tourists, at Pahalgam, in Jammu and Kashmir. In response, India launched Operation Sindoor, a military air assault on parts of Pakistan. Pakistan’s armed forces retaliated with strikes on Jammu and Kashmir, leading to greater civilian casualties on both sides. Fortunately, the confrontation did not spiral further—a ceasefire was reached within days. Yet the Narendra Modi government’s decision to declare the Pahalgam attack as “an act of war” was both reckless and dangerous.

At the time, there was no clarity on whether the men responsible for the attack had a connection to Pakistan. The Pakistani government, like many other countries, both authoritarian and liberal democratic, does sponsor non-state groups—who operate with varying degrees of autonomy—that carry out terror attacks beyond borders. But even this is not the same as an act executed by the state apparatus. This is a vitally important distinction.

The definition of war in international law and the United Nations charter is clear about jus ad bellum—the conditions under which there is a “right to go to war” in self-defence. This occurs when a country is attacked by the official armed forces of another country, or there is imminent threat of such an attack. To interpret Pahalgam as an act of war effectively hands any future cross-border militant the power to trigger a major military exchange between India and Pakistan, with the potential to escalate into a nuclear conflict. Pakistan’s government, even if it wished to, cannot likely fully prevent such attacks on Indian soil. The troubling question then arises: will future Indian governments escalate beyond Pahalgam’s aftermath, even to the point of contemplating nuclear retaliation?

The phrase “Global War on Terror” has been ubiquitous since 9/11 and is dangerously misleading. Political terrorism is a universal phenomenon, yet governments frequently narrow its application to select cultural, religious, ethnic or political groups, and to convenient geopolitical targets. This selective framing ensures that general discourse on terrorism is shot through with dishonesty and hypocrisy.